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Your support makes all the difference.All the whales kept inside what campaigners called a “whale prison” in Russia must be freed, authorities have said after they brought charged against a number of companies behind the facility.
Environmental activists have spent months pushing for the release of about 100 whales kept in cramped pools near the Pacific port city of Nakhodka, near Vladivostok in Russia's far east.
Now authorities have charged the firms thought to be controlling the facility and ordered the belugas and orcas be released back into the wild.
The companies, which appear to be affiliated, have previously been fined for illegal capture and have a history of selling the animals to amusement parks abroad.
Russia’s federal security service, the FSB, which announced the charges, appeared to have taken its cue from Vladimir Putin.
The president’s spokesman revealed last week that Mr Putin was concerned by the case and wanted the whales freed.
“Expertise showed that the animals were kept in unsatisfactory conditions, and must be released into their natural habitat,” the FSB was cited as saying by the TASS news agency.
Orcas and other large marine mammals are worth huge sums on money on the black market, reportedly up to $1m (£754,000) per animal.
The Kremlin has said the 11 orcas and 87 beluga whales were held in cruel conditions and were intended for sale to aquariums and Chinese buyers.
Russia’s ecology minister, Dmitry Kobylkin, told TASS the government was working hard to try and free the whales.
“We are doing everything we can. No one objects to releasing the orcas, but the most important thing is to release them properly.”
Conservation groups including Greenpeace and celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Pamela Anderson have backed a global campaign to close down the facility.
In the wild, orcas can travel up to 100 miles a day, whereas the pools and containers holding them in Russia’s far east are as small as 10m across.
Greenpeace has previously said it amounted to “torture” to keep the whales in the facility.
Russian law only allows the capture of whales for scientific purposes. In 2017 one the companies behind the facility unsuccessfully sued the country’s fishing agency after it refused to issue it such a quota for capturing the mammals.
The ruling also revealed the company had a contract with a company in China’s northeast but was unable to prove the whales would be kept in good conditions and used for educational purposes.
The whales are kept at one location off the Pacific coast but are owned by four separate companies. Company records and court filings, however, indicate that they are connected. In an interview with Russian state TV last year, a representative for the facility rejected reports of poor treatment of the animals.
Additional reporting by agencies
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